


Faults and Faultlines

by buckysbears (DrZebra)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Coffee Shops, Gen, Guilt, Healing, Post-Framework, Spoilers for 4x17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 00:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10628595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrZebra/pseuds/buckysbears
Summary: In which Fitz means to isolate himself, and mostly succeeds.That is, except for one Melinda May.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentcalliope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentcalliope/gifts).



> agentcalliope prompted fitzmay coffee shop au. everyone go wish her a happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!

He thinks it’s Jemma that tipped her off.

He doesn’t mean to isolate himself. Really, he doesn’t. It’s just a byproduct of not being on base anymore.

And, okay. Maybe he meant to _a little_. But would anyone really blame him? Did anyone even want him around, after everything that happened in the Framework? Jemma says he shouldn’t blame himself, but he does. He helped create it (in a not-as-roundabout-as-it-should’ve-been way). He helped create AIDA. He vouched for Radcliffe, when they brought him in. So, yes, it is (it _is_ , Jemma) sort of his fault. And he did such horrible things there, things that hurt the team, people he cares so deeply about.

So … isolation. Best policy.

This is his line of thinking, and he’s sticking with it.

It was just natural that he retire from SHIELD. At least for a little while. At least until everything settles back to normal. Until he can look all of them in the face again. Until he can look his own reflection in the face again.

Jemma doesn’t like that he’s away. She’s just worried about him, she says. Worried about the path he’s going down. She knows trauma, she says, and she knows isolation, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t help.

(Even still—she’s gone back to live on base, for the time being. They just … need a bit of space, that’s all. And she wanted to be closer to everyone. He doesn’t hold it against her, he wouldn’t want to be around himself right now either, not with everything she’d borne witness to. And she’s struggling. A lot. More than she lets him see, he knows. Being around him just makes it worse, but she still comes to visit, every so often. He doesn’t push it.)

But Jemma knows his schedule, mostly because she’s the one who made it (because she knows he’d just lie in bed all day if he didn’t have a routine to follow), so it makes sense.

He gets up, takes a walk around the block, works on projects till midmorning, and then goes to the little coffee shop down the street, usually 10:30 on the dot. He sits and has a cup of tea (which isn’t as good as what he can make at home, but it’s the ‘going outside and being around people’ thing that made Jemma put it in) and people watches. Sometimes he draws. Either future designs or just little doodles. A lot of monkeys. They’re not very good.

He kind of hates it. He hates being out in the world. He hates the chaos of the shop, all the people, the music, the smells and sounds. He’d much rather be at home. In bed, or watching TV. But apparently that wouldn’t be ‘productive’ or whatever, and he’s trying to make an effort on Jemma’s behalf, so he goes anyway. And sits, and watches, and draws, and just exists on this planet. This real, real planet.

But it’s definitely Jemma, he decides immediately, who told her about this. Who prodded her into coming. Because why else would May be walking into a coffee shop at 10:41 on a Tuesday morning, twenty minutes off base, dressed in civvies?

He watches her, brows scrunched, pencil clenched tight in his hand, as she makes her way up to the counter, orders a tea, and then hovers until it’s done. She doesn’t even look at him as she slides into the seat across from him at the table, just blows over the steaming liquid and takes a small sip.

He’s still staring, slack-jawed, as she scans over his sketchbook. “Cute,” she says, nodding at the page full of monkeys.

He pulls it closer self-consciously. “Wh-What are you doing here?”

She raises her eyes to scan over his face instead, giving him a pointed look.

“Jemma?” he sighs.

“She might’ve mentioned it.”

He raises a hand to scratch through his beard (Jemma hates it, but honestly, why should he even bother shaving? It’s not like he’s seeing anyone regularly. And it makes him look different. Different to how he did there, so clean-cut and groomed. He needs the reminder that he’s not living that life anymore.) “You really didn’t have to come.”

“Coulson won’t let me on missions still,” she admits. “All the therapy gets boring.”

Fitz snorts. “I hear that. Although, I didn’t know Coulson had to ‘let you’ do anything.”

A smirk crawls its way onto her face. “I like to let him think he’s in charge.”

Fitz smiles, looking down. He swirls the tea that’s left in his cup and takes a gulp, then grimaces. “Are- Are you here to ask me to come back?”

“No.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m not ready.”

“Okay.”

He looks back up at her. “That’s it? ‘Okay’?”

She shrugs. “Did you want more of a fuss?”

“No.”

“Good.”

He reaches up to tug on his ear, watching her as she sips her tea and examines the baristas behind the counter.

“The girl in blue is cheating on her boyfriend.”

He blinks, surprised, and turns to follow her eye-line. The girl looks normal to him, just filling people’s orders. “How do you figure?”

When he turns back, she shrugs again. “Just have a feeling.”

“Five bucks says you’re wrong.”

A challenge glints in her eyes. “Deal.” 

-

She shows up again on Friday. He’s surprised, again, but more pleasantly this time. (He’d missed her, okay? He misses all of them. He’s just- He’s not ready to go back. He can’t. Not after all he’d done.)

“No new info about the barista,” he says as she slips into the seat across from him.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Sure you’ve been paying enough attention?”

He scoffs, indignant. “I am every bit the spy you are, thank you very much.”

She huffs a quiet laugh, because they both know it isn’t true, but says nothing.

For a while they drink in silence. Fitz eventually has to put down his tea, because his stomach is rolling with something unpleasant and he needs to get this off his chest. “May, I—” He sighs, looks away. “I need to apologize.”

“I think you’ve done enough of that.”

“Not to you I haven’t. I- I need to say I’m sorry. For how I treated you there. It wasn’t right.”

He can see her watching him from the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look back at her.

“We were different people,” she says eventually. “Bad people. Both of us. It wasn’t you.”

“I remember it, so it was me.”

“I remember doing a lot of bad things, too. So I should feel bad?”

He shakes his head. “It’s different.”

“How?”

_Because you’re not me,_ he wants to say. But instead he doesn’t respond, and May doesn’t force him to.

-

She comes again next Tuesday. He wonders if that’s going to be a thing, her coming twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, like a standing appointment. He wonders if he should add that to the schedule, _Tea with May_. It’s kind of weird, if he thinks about it. But it’s nice, too. Even if she’s only doing this out of some obligation to Jemma.

“What’s this?” she asks as she sits down.

Fitz slides the file closer to her. “Just some new designs. I thought maybe Mack could … Is he back yet?”

May shakes her head.

“Oh.” Fitz nods, twiddles his fingers. “Then maybe- uh- one of the other lab techs could take a look at them.”

“Why didn’t you give these to Jemma?”

“I- I didn’t know the next time she was coming over, so I figured …” He shrugs.

“She’d come if you called.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly, doesn’t say that that’s why he didn’t call.

“Have you been working on improving the ICERs?” she asks, moving to take the folder and flip it open.

“No, no, it’s- uh—” He waves his hand as she looks through his designs. “Medical stuff, mostly.”

She glances up to watch him for a second, then nods and closes the folder. “Okay. After Coulson looks over these he’ll make the check out to—”

“No, it’s- it’s a donation. Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure?”

“The apartment isn’t that expensive, and Jemma’s still paying for half, anyway. I’m good for a while, I don’t need the money.”

“If that changes—”

“I have options. I could … I could get a job somewhere.”

“Stark would take you in a heartbeat.”

He nods. “Or maybe just … just a repair shop somewhere. Something slow.”

“You’d get bored.”

He shrugs, and she considers him.

“Bored can be good,” she continues. “Bored can be safe. It can be okay, for a little while, until you get back on your feet.”

He nods, glad she understands. “I think I could use some ‘bored’. I just feel … restless, I guess.”

“Have you been talking to anyone?”

“Besides you?”

“I meant professionally.”

He shakes his head. “Who would I talk to? I can’t tell anyone about this.”

“SHIELD has therapists.”

“I’m not SHIELD.”

“Not right now.”

“Maybe not ever.”

She watches him. “Do you really believe that?”

He sighs, scratches his nose. “I don’t know.”

“You could still talk to someone.”

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Not right now.”

“If you change your mind—”

“I’ll let you know.”

She nods, and then starts drinking her tea. He follows suit, and they drink in silence.

-

He doesn’t even realize what he’s done until she comes in. It’s only the next day, so he wasn’t expecting her. But the bell above the door rings, and he glances up, and it’s her staring back at him, and all of a sudden it hits him what he’s done, who he’s drawn.

He looks back down, down at his sketchpad. It’s not a good drawing, not by any means, but the face is unmistakable. The nose, the squareness of her jaw, the eyes looking back at him in graphite. By the time May sits, his eyes have already flooded with tears.

She looks at the drawing, looks at him, and doesn’t say anything.

“I—” His throat works around the words, mouth bobbing helplessly.

“Which one is it?” she asks.

He doesn’t know. His lips tremble, mouth gaped. It’s _her_ face—but whose?

“It’s all my fault,” he manages, and feels two tears track down his face. “It’s- It’s all …”

May watches him steadily.

AIDA, or Agnes? He can’t decide, can’t tell. Does it matter?

“Fitz—”

He rips the page free from the sketchbook, crumples it, and holds the wad tightly in one fist, breath coming in shaky gasps. He tips down until his head is resting against the sketchbook, fisting his other hand in his hair, tugging until it hurts. His heart is hammering unsteadily behind his ribs. He feels like he’s going to be sick. This might be a panic attack, he realizes. He’s been having those lately.

A touch on his hand startles him, but not enough to look up, just enough to make his shoulders jump. May loosens the grip he has on his hair, and holds his hand between her own instead. He tries to focus on the warmth of May’s hands over his, the coolness of the paper against his forehead. People are probably looking, but he tries not to think about that.

He just breathes, in and out, feeling his breath tickle his nose as it curls out of his mouth, hits the paper, and rolls outward. Lets the sounds of the shop flow over him, the shuffle of newspapers, the beep of cellphones, the clinking of mugs. Remembers that he’s not there anymore, he’s not that person anymore. She doesn’t control him.

Eventually, he settles. There are two wet spots on the sketchpad when he pulls his head up, and he stares down at them, sniffling, and then wipes his cheeks with the back of his wrist. May lets go of his hand, and then holds one of hers out. He deposits the sketch in her waiting palm, and she gets up and throws it in the trash. When she sits back down, she watches him, and doesn’t say anything.

“It’s all my fault,” he repeats, mumbling, not looking at her.

“If it was,” she starts, voice not giving anything away, “is that something you’d be able to live with?”

“I don’t even know how,” he admits.

“You get up, get through the day, and then go to sleep. Then you do it again the next day. That’s all it means.”

“So … what I’m doing now.”

She nods.

He huffs out a sigh, rubbing over his face. “I- I don’t know if there’s anything else I _could_ do. I d-don’t know if I’d …” He trails off, gaze caught by a reflection of a car door on the window.

“I’m not saying you have to accept it, not yet. I’m not saying you have to be okay. You just …” She shrugs. “Live.”

“And one day …”

“One day you might look back on this situation differently. Might think of yourself differently. But that doesn’t have to be now.”

“And until then—”

“You live.”

He nods, sighing again, finally glancing over to her face. “I don’t think I’m very good at it.”

“You’re still here. That’s enough.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“I know.”

“So … until I start thinking about myself differently, I- what?” He holds up his cup. “Sit around drinking tea?”

She tilts her head. “Or … you get off your ass and learn how to fly again.”

He realizes that they’re not just talking about him anymore (thinks that maybe they never were). Somehow, this is the thing that comforts him more than anything else she’s said.

-

The next time she comes in, she’s carrying an envelope, sealed with a cartoonish monkey sticker. It’s the first thing he notices when she walks through the door.

He fidgets while he waits for her to come over. Obviously it’s for him, or she wouldn’t have brought it at all. The sticker rules out a fair number of people who could’ve written it. If it was from Jemma, she would’ve brought it to him herself. Which really only leaves …

He already feels sick when she sits down in front of him. He shakes his head before she even hands it over.

“I don’t want that.”

“You don’t even know what it says.”

He considers that, lips twisting. “What does it say?”

“I don’t know.”

Grudgingly, he takes the letter. On the front is only written _Fitz_ , in Daisy’s unmistakable handwriting.

While he’s staring at it, May asks, “Anything new about the barista?”

He blinks, shaking his head, and tucks the envelope in the back pocket of his jeans. “No. But I think Joe, the owner, smokes pot. And I think the landlord is dealing it to him.”

“Should we bust them?” she asks, a little smirk coming to her face.

“Then they might replace this place with—” He scrunches his nose. “A gym, or something. This is the only coffee shop in walking distance of my apartment.”

“There’s a pizza arcade a few doors down.”

He looks at her like she’s grown a second head. “I can’t imagine you in an arcade.”

She leans back in her chair, takes a sip of tea. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Try me.”

“I could probably beat you in pinball.”

“I happen to be very good at pinball.”

“I happen to be better.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Let’s go right now.”

They do.

(She wins.)

-

“Have you read it yet?”

“No.”

She nods, says, “Okay,” and leaves it at that.

-

She comes in on a Wednesday, and she’s later than usual. It’s almost 11. He’d said to himself he’d wait until 11 on the dot, and then he was opening it whether or not she came in. She sees the envelope clutched between his hands, and comes and sits at the table without even ordering her tea.

He takes in a breath, lets it stutter out of his mouth, and then opens the envelope, the sticker splitting in half. He takes out the letter, smooths it onto the table in front of him, and then reads, slowly, eyes scraping over the words as carefully as he can manage.

After he finishes, he reads it again, just to be sure.

She doesn’t speak as he carefully folds the letter back up, and lets it sit on the table between them, drumming his fingers over the paper.

“She—” He stops.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“She wants me back in her life. She says she’s forgiven me for what happened and she wants to try and be friends again. How—” His brows scrunch, and he runs his hands over his face. “How has she forgiven me? I don’t know if I could.”

May shrugs. “That’s Daisy.”

“What—” He looks at May, eyes wide. “What do I do?”

“What do you want to do?”

He looks away, fidgeting with the edge of the letter with his thumb. “I could … I could invite her over to dinner?” he says, half a question.

“Yeah, you could.”

“I could make spaghetti. She loves my spaghetti.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“You do?”

She nods, and he nods back.

“Okay. Yeah, okay. This Friday night, maybe? Could you ask her?”

“Sure.”

“You can- um- get your tea now. Sorry.”

She throws away his empty cup and orders two.

-

She comes in Saturday morning. She’s never come in on a weekend before.

“How’d it go?” she asks, once she’s sitting across from him.

“What did Daisy say?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

He sighs. “It was … hard. I do believe she’s forgiven me, but it still _happened_ , and that still means something. And anyway, I still haven’t really forgiven myself for it.”

“Things are going to be hard, at first. There’s no getting around that.”

“What did she say about it?”

“That it was hard.”

He nods, tries not to let it sting. “She- um- she made fun of my beard.”

“Good.”

His mouth pops open. “Good?”

She nods, looking down at her cup, smirking. “It’s a terrible beard.”

A disbelieving huff comes out of him, and he looks away, around at the shop, then back to her. “I- I can’t believe … You know what? I take it all back. Everything I said. I’m not sorry. My beard’s not terrible— _you’re_ terrible.”

May just keeps smirking, and Fitz stews. Eventually, she says, “I heard you got a job at the auto shop.”

“Oh- Yeah. I start Monday.”

“I think that’ll be good for you.”

He nods. “That’s what I’m hoping.” And then he adds, “It’s an afternoon thing, so I’ll still be here in the mornings.”

“Good,” she says.

He doesn’t ask if she’s still going to come around, because he already knows the answer.

-

“We were both wrong,” he says without preamble. He’s been working a few weeks at the auto shop, and he can tell it’s making a difference. He feels a lot better, being useful again. Doing something with his hands.

She hasn’t even sat down yet, and she pauses, hovering next to the table, then sits. “About?”

“She’s not cheating on her boyfriend. She’s cheating on her girlfriend.”

May sets her cup down, blinking. “I’m not sure where that leaves the bet.”

“Settle it over a game of pinball?”

“Deal.”

(He feels like she’s going easy on him, but May still wins.)

(He doesn’t mind so much.)


End file.
